well I'm feeling better after talking to the medical oncologist here. He is obviously very well-read and educated on this and said he can see why I want the concurrent chemo, agrees the New England Journal of Medicine article suggests there would be some substantail benefit in reducing risk of recurrence (he said as a rule of thumb, if stage II has half the recurrence rate of stage III and IV averaged together to begin wioth, then you can think the treatment might have half the benefit which would still mean a 5-8% lower risk of recurrence for me as he saw it. Sounds good to me) AND he said it would probably be of benefit even if I started it a week or even two weeks into the rad. therapy so there will be time for my breast to heal and then have it.

Yay!!!

God life with cancer is so bizarre. Who ever would have thought I'd be cheering about "getting to" have chemo along with radiation?

I did ask him also about what he knew about the chances of having cancer in the opposite side lymph nodes at this stage if the cancer was not in the left side ones and he said he thought it would be less than 5%--possibly just 1 or 2 %-that it's really pretty rare. But I also sent an email to the radiation oncologist I saw at D-F about this asking him what he thought the risk was. I really just want to know risks and benefits and feel I'm making an informed decision.